Citadel Noir
by morkt
Summary: While working on a weapon dealer case, a C-Sec officer suspects corruption from higher up, but the more they dig into the case, the more they find how widespread the corruption actually reaches. Post ME3 Destroy Ending - Mostly OC with cameos from canon characters.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** My love of Mass Effect kind of melted with my love of film noir.

* * *

**_Chapter 1: Prologue_**

I joined C-Sec for the challenge; I guess that shows how little I actually knew of the job. Half the time it consisted of appeasing the politicians in the presidium, while the other half was keeping the poor in the wards in line. Diplomacy is not my strong point, so playing diplomat for the wealthy was never my idea of a good time. Then again, good times were hard to find on the Citadel nowadays.

The reaper war had ended, and unfortunately for me, so did whatever resemblance of peace on the Citadel. The Citadel repairs were slow coming, and with the destruction of most V.I.'s, all done manually. Refugees from every corner of the galaxy crowded the wards, and with them, every kind of exploiter in the galaxy. I guess where there's shit, there's gonna be flies.

My name was Calistiasa; the kind of handle you get stuck with when you have a turian father with an asari wife quadruple his age and just about as arty. Unlike most asari my age, I wasn't making fast cash showing skin in some dingy hole in the wall halfway across the galaxy. Instead, I was stuck in the middle of the galaxy making the same wage as a Presidium Tower janitor and I didn't even get to see it.

I've been chasing a fly for quite some time: The Black Maw, as he was known in certain circles - a batarian arms dealer. Even with most the batarians blown to hell by the reapers, their penchant for crime never left. This particular batarian was bringing in creds by the ship load and somehow managed to do it all under the radar. There was two types of crimes on the Citadel, the underground kind where the criminals gathered in dark corners whispering dark secrets, and the in-your-face kind, with the smiling politician who everyone was too afraid to touch.

I guessed that this batarian was the underground kind, but with the amount of weapons he was bringing it, I was almost certain he had some kind of help from the in-your-face kind. Not that I could prove it.

"Bullshit." My partner assured me once I told him my idea.

My partner, Narsus, some turian hotshot with delusions of both grandeur and class. Like me, he was just another low level C-Sec officer trying to make it by on dirt low wages and routine alcohol.

"I'm not saying it's fact, I'm just saying that to get the amount of weapons he brings in onto the Citadel, he has to have some kind of help from on high." I blew a cloud of smoke out of my lungs.

I never did like smoking. I started it for the aesthetics and by now it was just a habit. I wanted to be the mysterious detective working the lurid cases with the sultry women and their poisonous husbands. Instead, I was just a deadbeat detective working the cases no one wants, smoking a pack a day in some storage closet of an office. I wasn't even with C-Sec that long, so to image what the older guys must be like made my head ache.

Narsus slammed the folder shut and threw it down on the table, "Our shifts up, C, let's get a drink."

_Great, drinks with Narsus. I doubt even I could think of a better way to spend my night._ I thought, "I'll pass."

"Well, you know where to find me." For all the limited facial expressions of a turian, I had imagined him with some smug look spread across his face. I doubt I was wrong about it. Smugness was sort of his speciality.

The walk back to my apartment was about as bland as the rest of my day. The ward was filled with a thousand faces I didn't know, and about a dozen I wish I didn't. When most people think of the Citadel, they think of the Presidium and all its glamour; they never see the ugly underbelly of apathy and growing tension left over from the reaper war. Down here in the wards, the best thing to do was to keep your head down and your business to yourself, and that's exactly what I did.

My apartment was some low rent shithole down the closest thing to an alleyway on the Citadel. It consisted of a bed with more springs than cushions, a table and chair, and a small bathroom with barely enough space for both feet let alone a toilet and shower. The only window in the entire apartment didn't even give me a good view of anything aside from the adjacent wall.

I poured myself a drink of the cheapest scotch money could buy and I kicked back. I turned on the television to see more of the same shit that's been everyday all day: the cleanup efforts, the refugee problems, and the grinning politicians getting rich off both. I sparked up a cigarette and relaxed as much as I could.

After enough shots of scotch, it's pretty easy to forget how uncomfortable that chair was. That night, that was exactly where I was headed.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Chapter 2: An Unusual Suspect_**

When you're hung over, the sound of a knock at the door sounds like a jackhammer pressed up against the head and about as painful.

"C, it's Narsus." His shouts might as well have been over a loudspeaker, "We gotta head in."

When I finally managed to drag myself out of the coma I put myself the night before, I realized that I hadn't even made it to the bed; I was on the floor beside it. I guess that's better than most nights.

"CEA said they've got somethin' for us."

Customs, or Custom's Enforcement Agency if you wanted to be formal. They originally were a part of C-Sec, but the reaper war brought extra precautions and they broke off into their own agency. They liked to think of themselves as the big heroes in charge of putting an end to smuggling and other off world trafficking, but in the end, they always called in C-Sec.

The CEA saying they've got something meant one of two things; either they managed to stop a shipment of weapons for the Black Maw, or they've made an arrest in relation to the Black Maw. I would make a bet on which one it would be, but I wasn't in the mood. My head pounded; everything was brighter and louder.

"Are you alive or dead in there?" Narsus asked.

"Dead." I groaned, "Let me take a shower."

I didn't even bother waiting for the water to heat up. I was in the shower for about a minute before I was out, hoping that it would wash out the smell of alcohol and the hangover. When I got out, I wasn't sure if it did either.

Narsus was waiting outside my apartment door, his back pressed against the grimy wall of the alley, his foot tapping impatiently on the ground. I reached into my pocket, digging around for a cigarette. A fragment of my night came back to me and I realized that I smoked all of them.

"Do you have a cigarette?" I asked.

Narsus shook his head, "I quit, remember?"

No, I didn't remember. Then again, I usually tone out half the things he says. When he wasn't arguing against me, everything he said was about him and his narcissistic ego. Maybe I was exaggerating a little, but it didn't change the fact he annoyed me to no end. I was stuck with him two months ago after his old partner retired.

"So what did CEA want?" I pushed my hands into my pockets as we began the walk from my apartment to the station.

"They've made an arrest," He informed me, "They want us to interrogate."

_Damn, that's exactly what I would've bet on_, "How is related to our case?"

"An entire load of weapons." Narsus was smiling, or the closest thing to smiling that a turian could do, "They told me he dropped his name."

It wouldn't be the first time we've made an arrest who cried 'Black Maw'. The first time, it was just a sorry ass scumbag hoping to get out of serving time for smuggling a bucket of red sand, and the second time, the suspect ended up killing himself before we even got a chance to interrogate.

"Did they double up security?" I asked. The last thing I needed was for this guy to croak on us before we even got into the interrogation room.

Narsus nodded, "I asked, and they did."

I guess that should've been a weight off my chest, but I had a strange feeling in my gut, and not from last night's scotch either. By the time I arrived at the C-Sec station, I was twenty minutes late. As long as I kept my head down and on a straight line to the interrogation room, the captain wouldn't even notice.

Luckily for me, he didn't. The last thing I needed was for him to give me an earful of shit for being late for the fifth consecutive week. The captain was a human, and ever since the council started shouting that a human ended the war pretty much singlehandedly, he's held his nose a little higher.

A lone officer stood on guard duty in front of the interrogation room. I guess one guard is the closest to double security that C-Sec could manage. They've been stretched thin by the refugee situation, or more accurately, the riots. The officer stepped aside as me and Narsus approached.

I'm not sure if it was my hangover or just a new form of making the suspect uncomfortable, but the interrogation room was bright. Sitting handcuffed in a chair was a salarian, his hands jittering on the table like an addict deprived of a fix. His eyes nervously darted around the room, though most salarians I knew had a habit of examining everything in fast forward.

I couldn't figure it out, but there was something unsettling about the salarian. It wasn't his nervousness or his shiftiness. I couldn't pin point it, but I knew the moment I walked in the room, there was something off about him.

Narsus picked up the file on the table in front of him. Surprisingly for a criminal, it was thin, with only a single sheet stuffed inside with his information on it. He was the kind of guy who didn't even have a parking ticket.

"Dr. Amidon." Narsus read off the page, "Neurosurgeon."

Smugglers were normally blue-collar clowns with rap sheets as thick as their heads and whose modus operandi consisted of smuggling red sand in bags up their asses. Seeing a neurosurgeon involved was unusual. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, with enough credits, you can make anyone do just about anything.

"Wh-where's my lawyer? I'm not saying anything until I have my lawyer." The salarian said nervously.

"You already said 'Black Maw' to customs, so we want to know what you know." Narsus took the lead on the interrogation.

"W-what? I never said that. I mean... Yes, yes I did." He fumbled over his words like a drunk running a tire drill, "H-He must've planted those guns on me."

"You work at a hospital, right? How about I just call over there and tell them what's going on." I threatened. It was nice to see the good doctor squirm.

The salarian raised his hands as high as they could before the cuffs stopped them, "All right, all right. I'll tell you. He said to get the cargo here and that I'd be cleared to dock. He offered me a lot of credits."

"Where you supposed to meet him anywhere?" Narsus asked, leaning both hands on the table.

The salarian shook his head, "No, no, just dock it, and he'd take care of the rest." The salarian's eyes darted from me to Narsus, "I've told you all I know, I swear! Can I go now?"

"I guess we could release you, but then he might know you talked to us." I informed, "We could arrest you and then you can go when you post bail. I'll tell the judge."

Me talking politically; The thought made me sick, but I guess every once in a while we do things that make us sick, some more than others. Making deals with criminals was never my idea of justice, but sometimes it happens that way.

"I'll take my chances. Just release me." I had to give it to him; the salarian had balls, "You'll want to check over the cargo, he might have put something else in there. Something I didn't know about."

Narsus took off his cuffs and let the salarian doctor walk out of the room. Now we knew a fraction more than we did the day before. The Black Maw claimed to hand out docking privileges, though as that poor salarian bastard quickly found out, it was a lie.

"I'll get someone to keep tabs on him." Narsus said as the door shut.

It was a small victory for what it was worth. When you're hunting down a criminal, baby steps are better than none at all.


End file.
